Electrochemical devices employing thin layer lithium electrodes are the subject of intense investigation. Typical electrochemical devices or batteries include a lithium anode, a transition metal oxide composite cathode, and an electrolyte which is typically a solid or liquid and which includes a dissolved lithium salt. These new batteries all rely on the technology based on thin films where current densities are low with the result that they promote good redeposition and cycling of the lithium anode. This has lead to the need to produce thinner and thinner lithium electrodes. The utilization and handling of thin lithium electrodes are relatively easy when the thickness of such electrodes remain above about 100 microns. However, due to the softness of lithium, handling of thin lithium films or foils of a thickness of less than about 100 microns, as desired for new lithium batteries, is very difficult. This means that thin lithium films are extremely difficult to handle in continuous processes for manufacturing and assembling batteries. As a result, typically the thickness of present lithium films is six times greater than necessary, as compared to the capacity of the cathode with which it is used. Excess lithium is in fact undesirable and even detrimental because lithium is wasted, the battery is more expensive and substantially thicker than necessary, and the density of stored energy, expressed in terms of energy per unit volume and/or weight is lessened.
Therefore, what is needed is a method to overcome the above mentioned difficulties and to produce electrodes of very thin lithium films economically and in a continuous process.